I realise I’m terribly late to this whole podcast party, and that everyone else has been into it for ages and all that, but never mind. I have gathered some thoughts together about them. Here they are.

• The optimal length for a podcast is 26 minutes. This is the time it takes me from putting my iPod in my pocket in the morning, getting my bike out of the garage, cycling to work, getting the lift up to the third floor and putting my bike in the corner. Much longer than this and I end up awkwardly standing around by my bike, waiting for the podcast to end, and any shorter and I end up standing by the side of the road fumbling around trying to get my iPod out of my pocket so I can play something else instead. This increases the amount of time it takes me to get to work and disrupts my whole day. This is non-ideal.
• The optimal length for a podcast is likely to increase to about 32 minutes soon, if I move to where we are thinking of living. The podcast making people should try and take this into account.
• American Public Radio is fantastic. Especially the music programmes, which are a bit like if Radio 4 were allowed to make music programmes, except less snooty and British. The presenters actually seem to enjoy listening to music, rather than being all loud and brash and sceney and playing stuff just because it’s on a playlist. They are also remarkably unprejudiced about what gets played, so it’s not unlikely that you’ll hear some hip-hop up against some indie and some country. It’s a broadening experience.
• New Scientist need to bring their podcast back. Like, seriously. Please.
• The Channel 4 music podcasts are somewhat variable in quality, and not always entirely suited to running to, as they frequently feature long periods of slowcore ambient droning, intercut with thirty second tracks of extreme grindcore noise metal.
• Anyone who’s not a professional broadcaster probably shouldn’t be trying to make podcasts. There are people who’ve been doing this thing professionally for a long time, and they’re almost certainly going to be better, and more interesting, than you. OK?
• The BBC really need to make more things available as podcasts. Mark Kermode’s film reviews are great, as is The Now Show, but there’s not much at the moment. More, please.

So, yeah, I fully intended to start this blogging thing up again, but then somebody said “Hey, Chris! Why don’t you have a Facebook?” and I said “Facebook? Isn’t that, like, MySpace, except without music?” and they said “Well, yeah, but it’s really, really cool and everyone’s on it so you should definitely sign up!” and so I did.

In retrospect, this may have been a mistake as since then, my life has largely revolved around sitting on my Facebook homepage hitting refresh repeatedly in the hope that someone exciting has added me as a friend or left me a message or that maybe some girl I used to fancy at high school has come along and revealed (too late, naturally, given I’m getting married in under three months) that she loved me all along and is now heartbroken or something like that.

Anyway, the obsession is backing off slightly now – I’m only checking it every fifteen minutes or so, as opposed to every 30 seconds, which I’m sure must be much healthier for me. Yes.

Larry Flynt, arch-pornographer and perrenial boundaries-of-taste-pusher, writes about his friend, moral-majority God-botherer-in-chief, Jerry Falwell.

So, yeah, in between the process of buying a house, planning a wedding and training for the Great Manchester Run, I’ve not had the time or energy for much blogging lately. I’m going to try and start this thing up again, but it remains to be seen if it works or not.

In the meantime, you can retrospectively sponsor me for the run here – I came in at 58m9s, which I was quite happy with; I was aiming for under an hour. Next year I want to be closer to 50 minutes, I think.

Not one of:

• Andorra
• Switzerland
• Denmark
• Poland
• Israel

got through to the final? What MADNESS is this?

My vote’s going to Belarus, although I reckon Latvia stand a very good chance. Also, Germany and Greece are in there.

(incidentally, it doesn’t matter that the Czech Republic didn’t get through – they’re going to sell 17 hojillion albums in Germany next year anyway)

Now can we get rid of Menzies Campbell?

The best coffee shop in Manchester has closed. The scale of this tragedy cannot be overstated: it is roughly on par with every person in our office having their arms cut off. Looking out of the window and seeing those shutters covering the doorway near brings a tear to my eye.

More at Manchester Confidential and The Guardian.

Music in Britain is totally broken, and it’s all iTunes’ fault. Because each download of an individual track counts as a ‘single’ purchase, it counts towards the singles chart (but only if the tracks are purchased individually rather than as the whole album), every single track off the new Arctic Cockmonkeys album looks set to enter at least the top 75 this week. More at The Grauniad.

I hope you’re all thoroughly ashamed of yourselves, people of Britain. You’ve killed music. Well done.

This is a hell of an article.

I agree with him about “In Christ Alone”, though 🙂

Well, we had an offer accepted, and we’re now up to our eyeballs in solicitors and estate agents and mortages and all that lot. But yes, it’s quite exciting – a nice refurbished three bed semi with a garden and a proper brick shed. I’m even going to be allowed to build a pizza oven in the garden, apparently, assuming local hoodies don’t kick it over as soon as I’ve made it. So, hooray, yes.